waste of money?

[symphonica]

I was just wondering what everyone's success rates have been regarding survival rate past 2 months of age, simply because that has been the youngest that I have seen these guys being sold. Obviously, even under perfect rearing conditions, there are going to be some that were not destined to survive to adulthood, correct? That's how natural selection works.

In that sense, at what age does the "dying off" due to natural causes subside? I guess the bottom line of my question is, what age would be least likely for you to waste your money on purchasing one that was never intended to survive? Spending $300 on a baby chameleon that was destined not to survive just seems like, a waste of money...

 

[maskaturtle]

I'm not sure I agree with your theory that some babies are just not meant to survive. Natural Selection is thrown out the window when it comes to captive bread animals, as natural selection requires the wild element to function. I strongly believe that a 99% success rate in achievable with Panther Chameleons if proper attention is given. I'm sure some people and breeders may not agree, but we would have to agree to disagree. With proper incubation and individual care, a 100% success is usually possible!

-ANTHONY

 

[camimom]

Most reputable breeders have little to no die off of babies.

Sometimes a clutch wil be weaker, but a breeder will know the signs and act accordingly.

Babies under 3 months of age are susceptible to more stress yes, and can die easier, but when cared for properly, and not sold before 3 months old, they should be just fine.

I dont know what makes you think theres this high die off rate, but most breeders dont experience it with the panthers.

 

[NosyBe15]

In my opinion, baby chams should be atleast 4 months old before they are shipped or sold. They should have a steady healthy upbringing until they reach atleast 4 months.

 

[Carlton]

Most reputable breeders have little to no die off of babies.

Sometimes a clutch wil be weaker, but a breeder will know the signs and act accordingly.

Babies under 3 months of age are susceptible to more stress yes, and can die easier, but when cared for properly, and not sold before 3 months old, they should be just fine.

I dont know what makes you think theres this high die off rate, but most breeders dont experience it with the panthers.

One aspect of captive production that continues to concern me is whether breeders are unintentionally dooming future generations by "permitting" or helping weaker babies to survive and pass on their traits. Please don't misunderstand....I do not like watching anything die unnecessarily and would really struggle to let weak hatchlings take their chances without help. I also know that animals destined for a captive life don't need to be as robust as animals living in the wild. However, genetically-based weaknesses do accumulate and natural selection has its benefits! We don't have much of a clue about how various weaknesses express themselves in chams or most other exotics that are bred for any market. Are we setting up an individual cham (and its keeper) for a life of health problems, early onset of gout, arthritis, organ failure, MBD, or other problems by assisting a weak baby?

 

[camimom]

One aspect of captive production that continues to concern me is whether breeders are unintentionally dooming future generations by "permitting" or helping weaker babies to survive and pass on their traits. Please don't misunderstand....I do not like watching anything die unnecessarily and would really struggle to let weak hatchlings take their chances without help. I also know that animals destined for a captive life don't need to be as robust as animals living in the wild. However, genetically-based weaknesses do accumulate and natural selection has its benefits! We don't have much of a clue about how various weaknesses express themselves in chams or most other exotics that are bred for any market. Are we setting up an individual cham (and its keeper) for a life of health problems, early onset of gout, arthritis, organ failure, MBD, or other problems by assisting a weak baby?

I feel (and hope) that a responsible breeder will recognize these weaker babies, and not sell them to the buyers.

As well as not breed these weaker babies even if they make it to adult hood.

While i know that there are weak clutches of babies that hatch ( i had one myself that it happened with) I would think that in captivity, responsible breeders know how to care for the females and can then produce stronger clutches.

Not to mention, know when a baby is good vs. bad

I sold most of my clutch, but held back 4 babies that i didnt think would make it, and i was right. Its just about being responsible, and caring for animals correctly.

But look at how many breeders are on this site, and how many have 100% hatch rates as well as 100% sell rates.

 

[jorgeduardo]

Hey,
I am not a chameleon expert at all, but I'm a bio major , you have a misconception of what natural selection means and how does it work. Natural selection does not affect small groups in that amount of time (for example: a group of baby chameleons that just hatched). Natural selection would be the mechanism of evolutionary changes (millions of years) caused by the environment. This whole concept of natural selection would not determine the survival rate of baby chameleons. What you are talking about I think is more of a survival rate concept, think that really changes when we talk about animals in captivity.

So at this point when we decide to buy a baby chameleon it pretty much don't depend on us or even nature(some times it is just inevitable), it depends more on the breeder and how that breeder has been talking care of the babies.

Hope this help

 

[fluxlizard]

One aspect of captive production that continues to concern me is whether breeders are unintentionally dooming future generations by "permitting" or helping weaker babies to survive and pass on their traits. Please don't misunderstand....I do not like watching anything die unnecessarily and would really struggle to let weak hatchlings take their chances without help. I also know that animals destined for a captive life don't need to be as robust as animals living in the wild. However, genetically-based weaknesses do accumulate and natural selection has its benefits! We don't have much of a clue about how various weaknesses express themselves in chams or most other exotics that are bred for any market. Are we setting up an individual cham (and its keeper) for a life of health problems, early onset of gout, arthritis, organ failure, MBD, or other problems by assisting a weak baby?

This is a big concern for me too.

I don't think it is as much of a concern generally as it should be.

 

[Carlton]

Hey,
I am not a chameleon expert at all, but I'm a bio major , you have a misconception of what natural selection means and how does it work. Natural selection does not affect small groups in that amount of time (for example: a group of baby chameleons that just hatched). Natural selection would be the mechanism of evolutionary changes (millions of years) caused by the environment. This whole concept of natural selection would not determine the survival rate of baby chameleons. What you are talking about I think is more of a survival rate concept, think that really changes when we talk about animals in captivity.

So at this point when we decide to buy a baby chameleon it pretty much don't depend on us or even nature(some times it is just inevitable), it depends more on the breeder and how that breeder has been talking care of the babies.

Hope this help

I am well aware of the "real world" mechanism of natural selection thank you. I used the term because it is more familiar to those members who are not biologists. And, given enough time and circumstances, it will play in to the survival rate of babies. The drivers for selection in captivity for one single clutch don't happen to be environmental primarily, but if we control the swing of environmental parameter variation in captivity we can affect a species' ability to handle extreme events eventually.

 

[Carlton]

This is a big concern for me too.

I don't think it is as much of a concern generally as it should be.

Right. It is understandable that we choose to select for amazing color, size, docility, etc for our own benefit and for pet quality, but at some point if that incredible amount of red rain in a bloodline also means a shorter life, gout, or other metabolic misery we are creating a problem for the chams we care so much about. I know I think every cham is beautiful in its unique way and paying more for a particular trait doesn't really play in to choosing mine.

 

[fluxlizard]

In my opinion, baby chams should be atleast 4 months old before they are shipped or sold. They should have a steady healthy upbringing until they reach atleast 4 months.

Well, my veileds are usually young adult size by 4 months. If someone did not care about the health of my females, most of them could be bred at that time or within a month or so after purchase.

I feel 4-6 weeks is alright for them- by that age in my care they are several inches long and feeding on crickets that can be purchased in most pet shops (no longer small crickets).

So, I think it depends somewhat on the type of lizard.

Size/age is important (size more than age- ages have wildly different sizes depending on care sometimes- for example- if a veiled at 4 months is still so small that it is feeding on 1/4" crickets, man oh man is that chameleon going to be more fragile and delicate than one the same age large enough to be feeding on the largest winged adult crickets). But so too is the general condition of the lizard.

For me- for most medium/large chameleons like say panther chameleon or above, I feel very comfortable that they will make it after sale *with proper care from the buyer* if they are feeding on 1/2" crickets when they leave here. And I do my best to watch closely so that *nothing* leaves here if it isn't thriving.

As far as mortality after purchase - it very much depends on the quality of the lizard, the care given to it prior to purchase (as well as it's mother- if she has been given minimal nutrition and a poor environment, you can expect weaker babies), and the care given to it after purchase. All 3 are important factors, and the care of the baby especially before and after purchase can have rapid effects on it's health if it is still small.

 

[symphonica]

There is absolutely no such thing as 100% success rate. I'm a koi breeder, and have sold my koi to Kodama Koi farm many a times in NJ, just to give you an idea.

Hatch rate at 100%, possibly. But, naturally speaking, success rate is if your animal produces offspring that are more fit than themselves (unsuccessful if they produce unfit offspring).

Have breeders followed up with every single one of their sales, longitudinally (long-term) to ensure that they were able to live out their entire life span? Obviously, the longer they're kept by someone, the more opportunities for butchced husbandry, and more factors that could kill them, and it would therefore be impossible to get accurate data on this. The only way this would be possible would be if the breeder kept and raised all of his hatched eggs by himself, because then there are more constant variables.

I'm not sure what type of natural diseases there are for chameleons, but we all know that certain conditions may have a genetic component to them, such as heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes. Even if you were to live the most healthy life, you can't avoid it if you're genetically destined to end up sick. Can you really say that a human had great survival if he dies at 25 from cancer? I mean, 25 is technically an adult. Or even at 45?

Also, regarding the natural selection comment- humans have pretty much made this concept close to non-existent with advancements in medicine and technology. You can survive almost anything now. Some of the things we haven't been able to cure, such as cancer, have actually been on the rise. If evolution due to natural selection really existed, individuals with cancer should not be surviving or reproducing, and the rate of cancer should be decreasing. Medicine is actually mixing unfit blood into the population and giving them the opportunity to survive and reproduce - reverse natural selection. Think about infertility treatment. I mean no offense by this, but if this were nature, you wouldn't have offspring, perhaps because there was a reason why you shouldn't have offspring. In any case, not being able to have offspring means you wouldn't be able to pass on infertility.

And, a trip to the vet to cure an illness, I do not consider 100% survival. We're unnaturally tweaking numbers. If medicine were to improve much as it has for humans, for animals, does that mean anything goes? Who knows, maybe things like being prone to MBD or RI is genetic in chams. If that's the case, what are we doing curing these animals with medicine and breeding them? If medicine didn't exist, some of them wouldn't survive, again, taking away from the 100% survival rate. If we were really focused on breeding for improvement, we should aim for breeding only those that have never become ill, are extremely fertile, and have longevity. Then, we'll end up with super chams that never get sick, produce babies with no problems, and live way longer than average.

 

[Chameleon Creator]

There is absolutely no such thing as 100% success rate. I'm a koi breeder, and have sold my koi to Kodama Koi farm many a times in NJ, just to give you an idea.

Hatch rate at 100%, possibly. But, naturally speaking, success rate is if your animal produces offspring that are more fit than themselves (unsuccessful if they produce unfit offspring).

Have breeders followed up with every single one of their sales, longitudinally (long-term) to ensure that they were able to live out their entire life span? Obviously, the longer they're kept by someone, the more opportunities for butchced husbandry, and more factors that could kill them, and it would therefore be impossible to get accurate data on this. The only way this would be possible would be if the breeder kept and raised all of his hatched eggs by himself, because then there are more constant variables.

I'm not sure what type of natural diseases there are for chameleons, but we all know that certain conditions may have a genetic component to them, such as heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes. Even if you were to live the most healthy life, you can't avoid it if you're genetically destined to end up sick. Can you really say that a human had great survival if he dies at 25 from cancer? I mean, 25 is technically an adult. Or even at 45?

Also, regarding the natural selection comment- humans have pretty much made this concept close to non-existent with advancements in medicine and technology. You can survive almost anything now. Some of the things we haven't been able to cure, such as cancer, have actually been on the rise. If evolution due to natural selection really existed, individuals with cancer should not be surviving or reproducing, and the rate of cancer should be decreasing. Medicine is actually mixing unfit blood into the population and giving them the opportunity to survive and reproduce - reverse natural selection. Think about infertility treatment. I mean no offense by this, but if this were nature, you wouldn't have offspring, perhaps because there was a reason why you shouldn't have offspring. In any case, not being able to have offspring means you wouldn't be able to pass on infertility.

And, a trip to the vet to cure an illness, I do not consider 100% survival. We're unnaturally tweaking numbers. If medicine were to improve much as it has for humans, for animals, does that mean anything goes? Who knows, maybe things like being prone to MBD or RI is genetic in chams. If that's the case, what are we doing curing these animals with medicine and breeding them? If medicine didn't exist, some of them wouldn't survive, again, taking away from the 100% survival rate. If we were really focused on breeding for improvement, we should aim for breeding only those that have never become ill, are extremely fertile, and have longevity. Then, we'll end up with super chams that never get sick, produce babies with no problems, and live way longer than average.

Sounds spot on to me. Plus, if I had a super Cham, id make him wear a cape.

 

[maskaturtle]

One aspect of captive production that continues to concern me is whether breeders are unintentionally dooming future generations by "permitting" or helping weaker babies to survive and pass on their traits. Please don't misunderstand....I do not like watching anything die unnecessarily and would really struggle to let weak hatchlings take their chances without help. I also know that animals destined for a captive life don't need to be as robust as animals living in the wild. However, genetically-based weaknesses do accumulate and natural selection has its benefits! We don't have much of a clue about how various weaknesses express themselves in chams or most other exotics that are bred for any market. Are we setting up an individual cham (and its keeper) for a life of health problems, early onset of gout, arthritis, organ failure, MBD, or other problems by assisting a weak baby?

I don't think natural selection has anything to do with a weakness in genes...it is all about environmental factors...maybe I am wrong, not sure...

 

[RPCV]

Hey,
I am not a chameleon expert at all, but I'm a bio major , you have a misconception of what natural selection means and how does it work. Natural selection does not affect small groups in that amount of time (for example: a group of baby chameleons that just hatched). Natural selection would be the mechanism of evolutionary changes (millions of years) caused by the environment. This whole concept of natural selection would not determine the survival rate of baby chameleons. What you are talking about I think is more of a survival rate concept, think that really changes when we talk about animals in captivity.

So at this point when we decide to buy a baby chameleon it pretty much don't depend on us or even nature(some times it is just inevitable), it depends more on the breeder and how that breeder has been talking care of the babies.

Hope this help

Good points - natural selection is being taken a bit out of context. While in theory it could be possible for mutation to occur that would result in a meaningful modification to the species after a few generations the odds of this happening are negligible. In most cases it takes hundreds or thousands of generations for any meaningful change to be incorporated. (Selective breeding to encourage expression of an existing trait is another topic - not natural selection).

 

[fluxlizard]

Natural selection, unnatural selection- who cares about semantics?

Was the exact term even the point? I think not.

It's still selection. If you think you can take genetic problems and baby them along to the point those weak animals are reproducing and think that you are not selecting for weak genetics, and that those weak genetics are not going to be passed along, you are just full of nonsense.

I don't think that is what anybody is saying, but the point of someone misusing the term "natural selection" was that breeders are selecting the genetics to be passed on, and that when genetically weak animals are selected for breeding, the genetics are usually going to be a problem down the road for the descendants of those animals...

While in theory it could be possible for mutation to occur that would result in a meaningful modification to the species after a few generations the odds of this happening are negligible.

LOL all I can say is man oh man you there are some things you get the joy of discovering about animal breeding or lizards.

Some stuff for you to consider-

Take a look at some of the most popular mass produced lizards. Bearded dragons and leopard geckos. Do you think that all those colors, patterns, major differences in scalation, are not ALL the result of random mutations after a few generations? Exactly how many generations of bearded dragon do think have occurred since Bob Mailloux began breeding them in the 80s and had his first color mutation (the sandfire mutation)? He's told the story before about the origin of that line and how it started when he noticed an animal with more color and less pattern had been born there.

I myself never brought in the genetics for leatherbacks, nor for translucence, yet 2 years before the fire I had both genetic mutations pop up in my colony, independent of outside sources.

It is the same for nearly all the snake mutations and so forth- the breeders produce many, inbreed some, and then a mutation pops up which they lucked into and then they reproduce the mutation and market it as the next big exciting development. It has happened over and over and over again hundreds of times now across dozens of lizard and snake species.

Secondly- wild lizards- you need to look at a couple of studies in recent years where scientists released small numbers of lizards on lizard free islands and then returned after a couple decades to check on the lizards. In one case an insectivore became an omnivore with a special valve in the digestive system appearing to make it possible to use plant sources of food. There weren't so many insects on the island. Can't remember the results in the other case- could have been longer legs or something.

Thirdly, go read the national geographic article about captive breeding the (I think arctic) fox. Once again, selective breeding turned wild foxes into animals that behaved just like domestic dogs within a few years. They acted like dogs- played like dogs, treated their owners like dogs, etc. Simply by selecting the tamest individuals for breeding each generation.

If desirable traits can happen in a few generations, you better believe undesirable genetic weaknesses can as well.

Genetics matter. What gets passed on matters. Breeders should care what they select for breeding and what they allow out into the general population because they have no control over what will be reproduced or what will not, once it is sold.

I sure do. Nothing leaves here that is not thriving. No matter where it is going.

 

[symphonica]

Natural selection, unnatural selection- who cares about semantics?

It's still selection. If you think you can take genetic problems and baby them along to the point those weak animals are reproducing and think that you are not selecting for weak genetics, and that those weak genetics are not going to be passed along, you are just full of nonsense.

I don't think that is what anybody is saying, but the point of someone misusing the term "natural selection" was that breeders are selecting the genetics to be passed on, and that when genetically weak animals are selected for breeding, the genetics are usually going to be a problem down the road for the descendants of those animals...

Take a look at some of the most popular mass produced lizards. Bearded dragons and leopard geckos. Do you think that all those colors, patterns, major differences in scalation, are not ALL the result of random mutations after a few generations? Exactly how many generations of bearded dragon do think have occurred since Bob Mailloux began breeding them in the 80s and had his first color mutation (the sandfire mutation)? He's told the story before about the origin of that line and how it started when he noticed an animal with more color and less pattern had been born there.

If desirable traits can happen in a few generations, you better believe undesirable genetic weaknesses can as well.

Genetics matter. What gets passed on matters. Breeders should care what they select for breeding and what they allow out into the general population because they have no control over what will be reproduced or what will not, once it is sold.

Right on. And it's not just limited to reptiles. There was another thread asking why some of her babies survive, whereas others don't and what she's doing wrong (purchased from different breeders). I had mentioned that some of them simply weren't meant to survive, and that it is a greater risk of coming across that the younger the animal. I related it to my koi, and how there are different stages of survival that the animal must undergo, and how more and more drop dead as time goes on. With koi, we only have about a 10% chance of getting koi that are truly capable of breeding. Even if we have a 100% hatch rate, a lot of them don't survive the fry stage. If they do, a lot of them don't survive to grow past the 2-3" size. The next stage is 4-6". Then, 8-10", and finally 12+". Of those that do manage to get there, not all of them are capable of breeding, and should not be bred. Therefore, there should never be a 100% success rate.

 

[symphonica]

I am also into horses, and my horse was the Reserve National Champion for his division in 2013, and has been #1 in the state and region for 5 years in a row now.

I see a lot of horses being bred for solely color, as unusual coloration tends to bring in more money, as with anything else. However, a lot of these horses don't make it. They either don't have the talent to be competitive, or have horrible, dangerous temperaments. Also, if you don't know proper genetics, simply breeding two horses of color can actually not produce color, but just gives you a solid-colored baby. So now, you have a horse with plain, old, solid color, that isn't quality enough to be competitive, and isn't even safe to work with. These are the horses that people bring to auctions to get rid of, where they end up going to slaughter or to homes where they're abused or neglected. All because the focus was on producing color with no regards to genetics.

 

[RPCV]

You're right

Fluxlizard - you're right; I've done some homework and my perception of this topic was off. Thanks.